WHAT I MEAN TO SAY IS JUST THIS. STRICTLY SPEAKING, THERE IS NO SUCH THING
AS AN HYSTERICAL DISORDER. THERE IS ONLY DISORDER OF A GENERALLY
LAWLESS NATURE, WHICH IS TO SAY LAWLESSNESS IN GENERAL, AND THAT CAN
ALWAYS BE CONTROLLED BY DISCIPLINE AT THE TOP, IF IT IS IRON DISCIPLINE. SO, MY FRIENDS, LET ME SHARE THESE THOUGHTS WITH YOU. TELL OUR GOOD FRIEND
THE FRUIT JUICE SQUEEZER TO SIT UP STRAIGHT AND CONCENTRATE, AND TO BE
READY. HE TOO WILL HAVE HIS ORDERS, NO LESS THAN YOU DO, FOR THERE IS A PLACE FOR EVERYONE BENEATH ME.
AND SO LET ME SUBMIT AGAIN FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION THE SIMPLE YET VITAL
PROPOSITION THAT WE CANNOT HOPE TO SURVIVE AS A FREEDOM-LOVING PEOPLE
UNDER GOD IF WE ALLOW SELF-DELUDED CITIZENS AND SELF-APPOINTED
ZEALOTS, NO MATTER HOW WELL–INTENTIONED THEY ARE, AND I PERSONALLY
KNOW THEY ARE OFTEN WELL–INTENTIONED, STILL WE CANNOT ALLOW THEM TO
RUN AROUND THE STREETS OF JERUSALEM, OR AROUND THE DEAD SEA FOR THAT
MATTER, EVEN IF IT IS THE DRIED CUNT OF THE WORLD, SHOUTING WHATEVER
COMES INTO THEIR HEADS. BECAUSE, MY FRIENDS, IT JUST WON'T WORK.
NUBAR
THE GENTLE AND UNDERSTANDING,
YET NONETHELESS, BY NECESSITY,
IRON FIST AT THE TOP.
Nubar smiled benignly. He tucked his housecoat more tightly around his legs and read on.
The anonymous pilgrim, wrote the informer, now found himself standing in the doorway of the convent bakery. Inside the bakery a very old priest was doing a jig in front of the oven, while removing loaves of freshly baked bread. All the bread seemed to have been baked in one of four distinct shapes. The pilgrim remarked upon this, upon saying hello, and the old priest readily agreed.
Exactly four, said the old priest merrily, right as right you are. And those four shapes are none other than the Cross and Ireland, and Jerusalem and the Crimea, and what do you think of that?
Here the pilgrim made his second serious mistake of the day. He didn't slam the door and run. Instead he stood there, and shook his head, and said he didn't know what to think of it.
Well the Cross for obvious reasons, said the old priest, still doing his jig, and Jerusalem for equally obvious reasons. And Ireland not only because I was born there but because it's the most beautiful land there is so far as lands in this world go. And the Crimea because I was in a war there once and survived a disastrous cavalry charge there, and as a result of surviving that folly I saw the light and found my vocation in the Church, God's orders being vastly superior to man's at all times but especially so when you've seen service in the Light Brigade. So that's all of it and for the last seventy years I've been serving God soberly here where you see me, in front of this very oven turning out delicious loaves of bread shaped in the four concerns of my life. And after seventy years of such service, I suppose it's not surprising that I should be known to all who know me as the baking priest.
Nubar's head jerked back.
The baking priest. The man who had rescued O'Sullivan Beare when he first arrived in Jerusalem as a fugitive. The mysterious priest whom Nubar's agents had never been able to trace or identify. Was he real or had O'Sullivan Beare made him up?
Nubar had never known until this moment. And with that secret now out in the open, who could imagine what else might follow?
Nubar giggled happily. He congratulated himself.
At last it was all coming together.
In his excitement Nubar snatched up his canteen. He gargled with a mouthful of fiery mulberry raki, chewed some wood off the canteen, lit a soggy Macedonian Extra. He knew success would be his in the end. He'd always known it.
The informer in Jerusalem, meanwhile, was continuing his leisurely account of the conversation between an anonymous pilgrim and an elderly Franciscan known as the baking priest.
Since it was August, the bakery was hot.
Frightfully hot? asked the baking priest. He then said that although he was naturally accustomed to the oven's heat, he could well understand how it might be uncomfortable to others. For this reason he suggested the pilgrim should feel perfectly free, if he wished, to take off his clothes and hang them on the hook by the door.
And here was the pilgrim's third serious mistake of the day, and by far the most disastrous.
He should have realized, as he later told the informer at the fruit juice stand, that the bakery was so unbearably hot his sanity couldn't survive there for long. There was no question that he should have bolted at once, realizing the folly of listening to a man who was nearly a hundred years old, who had been merrily dancing in front of an oven in Jerusalem for seven decades, baking the same four loaves of bread.
But the unfortunate pilgrim, sweating heavily and already dazed, did as he was invited to do. He took off all his clothes and hung them on the hook by the door.
Naked then, he promptly collapsed beside a large water jar, too weak to do anything but splash an occasional handful of water over his burning head, utterly defenseless against any fancy the Franciscan might choose to conjure up as he capered around the room, distributing loaves of bread to its four corners.
On a pilgrimage, are you? sang the old priest. Well let me tell you there be odd events here, odd events within and about our Holy City, and none stranger than the epic tale of a long-term resident of Jerusalem who saw a genie in the last century and God in this one. Know about him? Probably not, but my source is unimpeachable, being the former terror of the Black and Tans in County Cork, and with such noble service behind him we can do nothing but believe him down to the last syllable.
The old priest fixed the helpless naked pilgrim with a maniacal stare. Maniacal, yes. There was no other word for it. After seventy years in front of that hot oven, the old priest's eyes glowed with a disturbing and unmistakable luster.
Are you ready then? said the old priest to the pilgrim. What's that, you are? Good. Well here's how this oddest of odd epics goes when properly told. But before we begin I suppose we should give it a name for itself and that would have to be God and the Genie. And then when you consider the man who saw them both, whose very own epic it is, you just might want to ruminate further and let your imagination go and sense that we have a Holy Trinity on our hands. Just might, I say. No one would want to go all the way with such a thing and claim it for sure. All right then. Our headlong charge is coming up, so hold on now. Tighten your reins, lad, sit tight and smartly. We're about to cover some ground in a breathtaking breakneck gallop as daring as any the world has heard since the plains at Balaklava thundered to the gallant hoofbeats of hopeless heroes. Ho, I say. Ho-o-o-o-o-o-o.
But before I report on what came next, wrote the informer, I think I should mention a funeral that was held in the spring in Haj Harun's back room. It was for Cairo Martyr's little pet, the albino monkey with the bright aquamarine genitals who was in the habit of curling up on Martyr's shoulder and pretending to be asleep, until his name was spoken.
The pet died of old age, in its sleep, and the funeral was quite an event. Szondi and O'Sullivan Beare and Haj Harun joined Martyr as pallbearers, since it seems they all had great affection for the little fellow and sadly mourned his passing. In fact the poker game was closed down for two weeks in tribute to the pet, whose grave is known only to the four of them, the burial party having set out with great stealth one dark moonless night, carefully on the lookout to see that they weren't being followed.
I include this information, wrote the informer, because it may have some significance I don't understand.
Bongo, screamed Nubar.
And immediately regretted it, for the syllables somehow seemed to feel at home in the confines of that subcellar and the echoes twanged around and around Nubar's head even after he had clapped his hands over his ears, bongobongobongo.